Parrots are entertaining and lovable. They have to be or you’d wring their necks when once again you discover something they chewed up they weren’t supposed to have. African Grays are amazingly destructive little terrors with that 5-year-old intelligence and 2-year old’s emotional level. It’s like having an extra smart tot around perpetually in the Terrible Two’s.

Take the other evening for instance, when I was busy working on my desktop computer in the office while The Farmer was watching a movie on tv. All of a sudden I heard him exclaim, “Where did you come from?”

When I went to investigate, it seems my parrot went walkabout and had walked from one side of the house to the other, crept across the floor of the den, then crawled up the side of his recliner without him ever knowing she was anywhere close.

I snapped this picture before I returned the parrot to her cage. She and the Farmer have an ongoing love-to-hate-ya relationship, so I felt it best to separate them.  (You notice he has his arm put down away from the bird!)

Then just yesterday, at the same time I was pulling my hair out over a messed up blog, I was bombing our basement. Got to take my frustrations out somehow, right?

Well, actually, we’ve had some trouble with little spiders in the Cave Geeks space. We tried glue traps and spraying, but that didn’t have much effect. I figured a bug bomb ought to do the trick, and would not only get rid of spiders, but any other creepy crawlies that found their way in. So when the guys left for work Monday morning, I got bombed. Oh wait, that’s not quite right…

Okay, so what I really did was set off the bug bomb in the basement. Now that space is right under the parrot’s cage, with a couple of vents nearby. Since birds are sensitive to air pollutants (think miner’s and their canaries), I figured I’d better move her outside for the duration.

I set her travel cage on a table on the back porch, carried her out there and locked her up.

There’s a dog door to the porch, and Toby the Wonder Dog comes and goes as he pleases. He decided to come up on the porch and investigate. The parrot took exception to this.

Just in case you didn’t realize it, that is NOT the dog growling in the first half of that video. That is the PARROT growling at the dog, then saying, “What?” a couple of times.

How’s that for a turnaround? I’d never heard her do that, and have no idea where she learned it or how she knew to growl at the dog…

But it sure was funny!

Tags: parrot, The Farmer

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If you’ve tried to read my blog the last couple of days, it’s hard to tell what you found when you got to the site. It’s been on again, off again the last two days.

It all started with me being tired of seeing the notice that a new version of Wordpress was available, please update now. This being hosted on Go Daddy, they do updates through “The Hosting Connection.”

Only once it was updated, I couldn’t log-in.

Then it got to the point it wouldn’t connect with the database at all, and error pages were popping up instead of the front page of the site.

It took two days of frustrating, pulling my hair out, searching all over forums and asking questions of tech support before it finally got fixed. But it wasn’t anything that I did that fixed it. Or anything I found on the forums. Or anything Go Daddy’s tech support told me. They were pretty much useless.

Nope, all I can say is thank goodness for Cave Geeks. There’s something to be said for raising up your own tech support.

Youngest Son got the database, user name and passwords all connecting to each other again, and transferred a back-up of the posts to the blog. I still need to tweak some stuff to get everything back in order, but at least Rural Ramblings is up and running again.

Let’s hope it stays that way.

Tags: frustrations

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After a summer of few keets, a nesting trio decided to show up their peers and produced a HUGE bunch of keets. I counted a couple of dozen running around that first day.

They sure were fun to watch running along after the adults, trying to keep up on those very short little legs!

Once they get in the grass, it’s impossible to see them. Once in a while a little head bobs up, or you can see the grass moving.

Other sights in the back 40 (actually, it’s probably more like 5), include our matron ewe, Coconut, lazing in the shade of the trees on a hot southern summer day.

Not far away, our female llama, Keira (aka Miss Crankypants), is also taking advantage of the shade. When your wool is black, it really soaks up the heat from the sun! At least she now has a lot less wool to soak up the warmth.

What are YOU lookin’ at???

Down in the bottom pasture, we’re not mowing this year, or allowing grazing. We’re just letting it grow wild.

We have more than enough pasture for the animals without it, so it’s good for growing wildflowers and butterfly grazing.

I love the nice bright red of these Cardinal Flowers. They like the bottom pasture as it has a spring keeping part of it wet.

Of course, the hummingbirds love the Cardinal Flowers too. Those tube-like flowers are just made for hummers to sip some yummy nectar.

There is also a lot of Ironweed with purple flowers, and Joe Pye Weed with lovely dusky pink flowers. The butterflies really go for these!

The Farmer mows walking paths through the weeds, so Toby and I enjoy checking things out in the mornings, and looking at spiderwebs glistening with dew, bees buzzing around the flowers, and butterflies flitting about.

It’s a nice, serene way to start the morning.

We usually end up at the pond. There are droves of dragonflies dancing through the air above the pond. They stop for a rest on a weed now and then.

They fly around so much they kind of beat their wings ragged!

Then it’s one last glimpse of serenity before going back to work.

“The Mirrormere”

If you’re a “Lord of the Rings” fan, you might recognize that reference. Anyway, the pond has lovely reflections, even though the water is way down due to drought conditions.

And that’s a glimpse of the past week here on the farm!

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For years I had the greatest shearer. Joel was so young when he first started, his mother drove him to jobs. His brother, Matthew, was his assistant, and my good friend, Sharron, also assisted on shearing days. The four of us made a good team. We each had a job to do, and most of the time everything went smoothly.

Joel always complained about how hard my little Shetlands were to shear, and he and Matthew always commented on how easy Keira, our llama, was to shear. She haltered up fairly easily, and stood still while Joel sheared her, with only an occasional flick of the ears when he did her legs or neck.

He and Matthew should have been here today. They wouldn’t have believed it was the same llama.

We sheared Samson first, figuring he was bigger and a bit of an unknown. He’s always been pretty laid back since we got him, but still won’t allow us to pet him or get too close if he can help it, so we didn’t know how he would react to being sheared.

Once The Farmer caught him, and we finally pushed and pulled and got him over to our shearing station, he was as easy-going as ever, and allowed The Farmer to shear all over without getting too upset. The Geek held Samson’s head and said nice things to him, telling him not to worry, he wouldn’t lose his strength just because we were cutting his hair.

I hemmed him in on one side while The Farmer sheared on the other. We may not be professionals, but he got sheared without a nick, and he’ll be cooler now, so that’s what counts.

And he didn’t kick. He didn’t fuss. He didn’t spit. Too bad I couldn’t say the same for Keira.

While we were shearing Samson, she made the mistake of going into the shed to get further away from us, and I shut the gate. Good thing, or we might never have caught her. She knew what was up, and she wasn’t having any.

Even in that small space we had a devil of a time trying to get hold of her and put a halter and lead on her. Just take a look at this video and you’ll see what I mean!

I’d never heard her make such screams, whinny’s and spit so much. And not just that polite little “I spit in your general direction” with a little saliva from her mouth. Oh no, this was the “I’m hocking up some fermented green goop and showering you in a spew of stench.”

It was nasty.

She never let up the whole time we were shearing her. She fussed, she spit, she kicked, she spit, she tried to bite, she spit, she reared up, she spit, she screamed, she spit, she sidled around, she spit, she tried to kush down and then rear back up, she spit, she jumped around, and oh, did I mention she SPIT???

I’m afraid I called her worse than “Miss Crankypants” today. She was the worst-behaved little brat we’ve ever sheared. So what happened to our sweet, friendly, I don’t mind what you do to me llama?

She got pregnant.

Man, those hormones must be rough on a llama! I hope she goes back to her old self after she has a cria, cause I’d hate to think she was going to stay this cranky from now on!

11 and a half months gestation is going to seem like forever to all of us.

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Here we are, another Friday, and it’s been a BUSY week as usual! With school, work, farm and household chores, who has time for photography?

Okay, I confess, I just about always carry my camera with me when I go out to do morning chores. So here’s a few of this week’s snapshots from the farm.

I’d never seen such red wasps until I moved to the south. I think they blend in better with all the red soil, ha! (As opposed to Iowa or Canada, which both have some of the blackest soil I’ve ever seen!)

This is our male llama, Samson, before getting up in the morning. He has a couple of hitchhikers…

It’s bad enough they think the llama is their own personal roosting place, but then the rooster has just got to crow about it…

At least one of the sheep thinks he’s really baaaaad.

Later that afternoon he figured a nice fluffy sheep in the shade made a good roosting place.

Our female llama doesn’t care how many chickens sit on Samson or the sheep, as long as she gets her afternoon session in the sprinkler.

To really get the full effect of that picture, be sure to click on it so it enlarges and you can see the drops of water more clearly!

We have some new guinea babies running around the farm.

I’m not sure why it takes half a dozen adult guineas to take care of four little keets! Last year they were having 12-14 keets hatching at a time.

And lastly, I just know you’ve been wondering what I did with all the scrap wool I skirted off all those fleeces. Well, here’s your answer:

Bet you didn’t know we grow wool in our flowerbeds here in the south!

And there you have it, a glimpse of life this past week on the farm.

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I may feel human again, oh say, in another century or so.

Well, when you consider in the last week, mostly the last 4 days, I got 100 bags of fiber ready for sale, I guess it’s no wonder I’m a bit done in.

Wednesday I worked on wool.
Thursday The Farmer and I both worked on wool.
Friday morning I worked on wool.
Saturday I worked on wool.

I was sooooo thrilled when I threw the final bag of skirted wool onto the pile yesterday! And then took down the skirting table, swept up the bits of fleece scattered all over the floor, mopped the kitchen floor and otherwise got rid of the mess I’d made.

Of course, the den is now full of fiber. One couch is buried, with wool up the sides of the wall, and piled in front of the couch.

There are bags of wool, bags of alpaca fiber, bags of llama fiber, and even a bag of mohair. There are bags of trash wool, bags of scrap wool, and old bags from previous storage.

At least the smell is better with the wool bagged up, but it

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Things are wooly bad around here.

Why do I say that? Well, there are bags of wool all over the house right now. I had them stored in the basement, but then I made the mistake of putting an ad for the fleeces at a greatly reduced price on an elist. I just wanted to clear a few out of the way.

Over 45 inquiries later, and I’ve probably got more requests than I’ve got wool.

At first I figured I’d just work on it whenever I had some extra time, and sent out an email telling people it would take a while before I got through all of the wool, and please be patient, I’ll get to them as quickly as I can.

But then I realized that wasn’t going to get it. The wool gets everywhere, and it’s too big a hassle to clean it up every time I get a fleece ready. My living room and den have been taken over and I can’t stand the mess or the smell… time to finish this up.

So tomorrow The Farmer and I are going to have a Wool Work Day. I hope we can get through all the bags of wool, then I can clean up most of the mess and start packing up orders.

That’s going to take a wooly long time. (I know, I’m really baaaaaad.)

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